The present invention relates generally to RAKE receivers and particularly to RAKE receivers that suppress multi-transmitter interference.
RAKE receivers represent a well-known approach to multi-path reception, particularly in Direct Sequence Code Division Multiple Access (DS-CDMA) wireless communication. In a multi-path communication channel, a transmitted signal travels through multiple propagation paths to the receiver. Thus, the receiver receives multiple “echoes” of the transmitted signal, with each multi-path echo generally suffering from different path delay, phase, and attenuation effects.
RAKE receivers exploit multi-path propagation by assigning each of two or more RAKE “fingers” to one of the incoming multi-path echoes. Each finger is tuned to a particular multi-path echo. By estimating the channel effects, e.g., phase and attenuation, and by properly accounting for the differences in path delays, the individual output from each RAKE finger may be combined with the outputs from the other fingers to provide a combined RAKE output signal with a greatly improved signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).
In DS-CDMA systems, such as Wideband CDMA (WCDMA), CDMA-2000 and 1XEV-DO, high transmission data rates are achieved by transmitting data at a low spreading factor and/or on more than one spreading code (multi-code). When a low spreading factor and/or multi-code is used, performance is sensitive to multi-path dispersion. With dispersion, there are multiple echoes of the transmitted signal with different relative delays. These echoes interfere with one another. Not only is orthogonality lost between successive symbols as one symbol overlaps with the next, but orthogonality is also lost between symbols sent on different, orthogonal codes, e.g., symbols transmitted to the same user or to different users.
As a result, performance is often limited by interference between different symbols being sent to the same user and/or different users. There are two predominant types of symbol interference: self-interference and multi-transmitter interference. Self-interference occurs when other desired symbols sent in parallel (multi-code) or in series (previous, next symbols) by a transmitter of interest interfere with a symbol of interest. A transmitter of interest is the device from which a receiving device expects to receive data, e.g., a base station serving the cell in which the user is located. All other transmitters are considered interferers in that their symbol transmissions are not of interest to the receiving device and may interfere with a symbol of interest.
Multi-transmitter interference occurs when symbol transmissions originated by one or more interfering transmitters adversely affect a symbol of interest. Interfering transmitters may reside within the same cell as the receiving device or in other cells. For example, multi-transmitter interference in the downlink arises when other-user symbols sent from the same base station interfere with a symbol of interest (own-cell interference). Multi-transmitter interference also arises when other-user symbols sent by a different base station interfere with a symbol of interest (other-cell interference). Nearby mobile devices located in the same or different cell may also cause multi-transmitter interference in the uplink.
A key aspect of symbol interference is that it varies from symbol to symbol. This variation is due to the spreading codes being a combination of Walsh codes and a cell-specific common scrambling code. The scrambling code has a period much longer than the symbol period, which effectively changes the overall spreading code from symbol period to symbol period. In addition, symbols targeted for different users are encoded using different spreading codes.